What marketers need from measurement: blog

From the Media Ratings Council lifting its advisory on viewable impressions to sessions on tackling international metrics issues, Chris Williams of IAB Canada takes in the I-COM Global Summit in Spain.

Chris Williams, president of IAB Canada, is in Spain this week taking in the I-COM Global Summit on marketing data and measurement. For those not able to take in the discussions in Seville, Williams is blogging the events for Media in Canada.

George Ivie, CEO of the MRC, is here in Seville, Spain chairing a working committee within the International Conference on Media Measurement. I asked George, “so happens next?” He said, “well we will have to see how this plays out between the agencies and the publishers.”

The area still to come is video viewability, which required the MRC to invent a statistical analysis to isolate the effect of the creative on the viewability measure. After viewability, expect the MRC to tackle cross-media GRPs, mobile and fraud measurement as its priorities.

Further presentations on the first day included an interesting case from the Dutch Joint Industry Committee, which provides digital metrics. After a dramatic shift by consumers to mobile along with additional governance issues, the group decided to disband the existing arrangement and re-form with a tighter emphasis on gathering publisher ad server data along with building out a mobile panel.

The most popular answer from the group was a need for a common set of metrics across all media for brand and response campaigns. Clearly the challenge to the room in that request is that there isn’t a standard anywhere to use. While some point to a universal GRP as the answer, Jane Clark, managing director at the Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement (CIMM) pointed out that GRPs aren’t a metric for specific ad exposure, at least not yet.

The split between local and international solutions, and the focus on measuring ads instead of the publishers, creates much of the chaos we see in the industry. Fuguitt underlined the need for a consumer-driven approach where path to purchase evidence is strong.

I’m looking forward to the rest of the week where we will find out the winners of the big data venture challenge and cheer for the Canadian contestant James Prudhomme, CEO of Datacratic.